IC-7300: more antenna connectors with Arduino!

I wish to use the IC-7300 on all my bands, but the problem with this rig it’s always the same: too much frequencies for a single antenna connector and I don’t want to swap the coax all the time. On the market there are manual coax switches, but there are not so handy for a remote use…and this one is cheaper.

So, in a rainy Sunday I have built this 1×3 antenna switch controlled by Arduino. I already done something similar in 2009 with a PIC, this time I choose Arduino because it does not need of any programmer to write the code on it, just the USB cable. In the past several OMs have sent their empty PICs to me and I have sent them back programmed. A single project usually don’t worth the cost of a PIC programmer.

This should stops the foot traffic, everyone can load the code in the IDE and write it into the chip with a click.

This 1×3 ant switch is made with few generic electronic components around a “Nano” (ATMEGA328), but the code can be adapted to any ucontroller. It is powered by the transceiver (pins 2 and 8 of the ACC connector) and reads the frequency from the “Remote” jack. It can be fixed directly on the antenna’s connector by using a male-male PL259 adapter. Into the RF box there are three Finder relays model 41.52.9.012.5010 with gold plated contacts. The values of attenuation and isolation between the ports are good:

28 MHz – att. 0.11 dB – isol. 40 dB
50 MHz – att. 0.11 dB – isol.35 dB
70 MHz – att. 0.12 dB – isol. 32 dB

The microcontroller and the rest of the parts are in a separate box to avoid interferences.

The IC-7300’s range of frequency 30-74800 kHz is divided in 24 sub-bands, every sub-band can have associated one of the three antennas output. The right antenna is selected automatically. Simply it remembers the last selection.